Clarence Victor Carnes (January 14, 1927 – October 3, 1988), known as The Choctaw Kid, was a

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

man best known as the youngest inmate incarcerated at

Alcatraz Alcatraz Island () is a small island about 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco in San Francisco Bay, California, near the Golden Gate Strait. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fo ...

and for his participation in the bloody escape attempt known as the " Battle of Alcatraz".

Early life

Clarence Carnes was born in Daisy, Oklahoma, the oldest of five children. He was raised in poverty, and his criminal activities began as a child, stealing candy bars from his school. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 16 for the murder of a garage attendant during an attempted hold-up. In early 1945, he escaped from the Granite Reformatory with a number of other prisoners, but was recaptured in April 1945 and sentenced to an additional 99 years for kidnapping a man, Jack Nance, while he was on the run. He was then sent to Leavenworth, but attempted to escape while in the custody of the

United States Marshals Service The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The Marshals Service serves as the enforcement and security arm of the United States federal judi ...

and was transferred to

along with an additional five-year sentence. There, he was assessed by psychiatrist Romney M. Ritchey and found to have a psychopathic personality, and to be emotionally unstable with an I.Q. of 93.

Alcatraz

Carnes arrived on Alcatraz on July 6, 1945. On May 2, 1946, Carnes and five other inmates participated in a failed attempt to escape from Alcatraz which turned into the bloody " Battle of Alcatraz", so-called because three inmates and two prison officers died. After the escape failed, he was tried for murder along with the two other survivors, Sam Shockley and Miran Edgar Thompson, and was found guilty of participating in the plot. Shockley and Thompson were sentenced to death, however Carnes was not executed because he had not directly participated in the murders of the officers and was instead given a life sentence. Some corrections officers who had been taken hostage testified that he had refrained from following instructions to kill them. Carnes remained on Alcatraz until its closure in 1963, spending most of the time there in the segregation unit. He claimed that he had received a postcard from Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers, John and Clarence, which read "Gone fishing", which was a code word that their escape had succeeded. No material evidence of such a postcard has been found.

Parole, re-incarceration, death

At the time of Carnes' convictions, the federal government still had parole. Consequently, he was paroled in 1973, at the age of 46. However, Carnes's parole was revoked twice due to parole violations and he was sent back to prison with BOP# 61805-132. He died of

AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

-related complications on October 3, 1988, at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the List of cities in Missouri, third most populous city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County, Missouri, Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 censu ...

, and was buried in a paupers' grave. In 1989, Massachusetts

organized crime Organized crime is a category of transnational organized crime, transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a f ...

figure James J. "Whitey" Bulger, who had befriended Carnes while on Alcatraz, paid for his body to be exhumed and reburied on land in the

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (Choctaw language, Choctaw: ''Chahta Okla'') is a Indian reservation, Native American reservation occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. At roughly , it is the second-largest reservation ...

. Bulger reportedly bought a lavish $4,000 bronze casket and paid for a car to transport Carnes' remains from Missouri to Oklahoma. Carnes is buried at the Billy Cemetery in Daisy, Oklahoma.

In popular culture

Carnes' life was dramatized in the 1980 Telepictures Corporation TV movie '' Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story''. The film, which aired in two 95 minute parts, starred Michael Beck as Clarence Carnes. The Battle of Alcatraz was dramatized in the 1987 TV movie ''Six Against the Rock'', based on the novel by Clark Howard. While most of the characters were given the names of the real inmates (such as Bernard Coy and Miran Thompson), Carnes' character was renamed Dan Durando, portrayed by Paul Sanchez. Carnes' life was interpreted in Rolling Way the Rock, a performance piece by Tim Tingle, also a Choctaw man, which premiered in 2006 at the International Symposium of Artists of Conscience in

Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Gre ...

. On 2018, Derek Nelson portrayed Carnes in the film “Alcatraz,” which has Carnes as the central figure of the film, with interiors and exteriors shot at a prison in Brighton, England, and on Alcatraz Island, now a US National Park site.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Carnes, Clarence 1927 births 1988 deaths People from Atoka County, Oklahoma Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma people American escapees Inmates of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment American people who died in prison custody Prisoners who died in United States federal government detention Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Oklahoma Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by the United States federal government Escapees from United States federal government detention Escapees from Oklahoma detention AIDS-related deaths in Missouri American people convicted of murder People with antisocial personality disorder People convicted of murder by Oklahoma People convicted under the Federal Kidnapping Act People convicted of murder by the United States federal government People paroled from life sentence 20th-century Native American people